Novaya Gazeta Europe said Putin received at least 31.6 million fraudulent votes, out of about 75 million votes cast. Important Stories, meanwhile, concluded that around 22 million bad votes were given to Putin. Important Stories explained its lower estimate by saying it excluded Moscow's vote tallies because officials combined in-person votes with electronic online voting, and that may have distorted the analysis.

"Never before have we seen a presidential campaign that fell so far short of constitutional standards," Golos, a now-banned election watchdog organization, wrote in its summary report.

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"This was the most filthily falsified presidential election in the country's history," Shukshin wrote.

The surveys, carried out by the Levada Centre three times so far, at the end of March, of April and at the beginning of June, should be read by all of those wanting to believe that a single madman is dragging his country into a war they didn’t ask for and do not support. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that this is the case. Even if we assume that people would be wary of expressing open disapproval of the war, the overriding impression is that the population are happy to blame anybody but Russia for an act of aggression not seen since the Second World War.

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Judging by the results of the survey, 77% of respondents support “the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine”, with 47% saying that they definitely support them (the others – that they basically support them). This is a few points lower than in March, but higher than at the end of April. These may be normal fluctuations, however it was in April that the Russian atrocities committed in Bucha and other Kyiv oblast cities first received widespread coverage, eliciting international outrage. Levada found support to be greatest among the older respondents, lowest among the younger, however even among the 18-24-year-olds, there is still 70% (decided or general) support.

With COVID-19, vaccines still fulfill their primary role: protecting against severe disease. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinated people who catch the Delta variant are 25 times less likely to have a severe case or die. The overwhelming majority who do catch it will have mild or no symptoms.

But growing evidence suggests that, with the Delta variant, fully vaccinated people can still transmit the virus.

As covid-19 has spread around the world, people have become grimly familiar with the death tolls that their governments publish each day. Unfortunately, the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic may be even higher, for several reasons. First, the official statistics in many countries exclude victims who did not test positive for coronavirus before dying — which can be a substantial majority in places with little capacity for testing. Second, hospitals and civil registries may not process death certificates for several days, or even weeks, which creates lags in the data. And third, the pandemic has made it harder for doctors to treat other conditions and discouraged people from going to hospital, which may have indirectly caused an increase in fatalities from diseases other than covid-19.

One way to account for these methodological problems is to use a simpler measure, known as "excess deaths": take the number of people who die from any cause in a given region and period, and then compare it with a historical baseline from recent years. We have used statistical models to create our baselines, by predicting the number of deaths each region would normally have recorded in 2020.

You can see that for holding periods of less than 9 years the stock strategy is a lot more risky than the bond. However if your holding period exceeds 9 years the stock strategy is both, less risky and yielding better returns. Also notice that in long term, the width of the yield distribution for the stock strategy is about the same as for bonds, but overall it is located above bond yield distribution.

What does it all mean for regular folks that are trying to save for the retirement? Don't worry about whether the market is trending up or down, it's in a bubble or a recession is coming. You will never be able to time the market. But putting money in stocks and not touching them (other than reinvesting dividends) for long periods of time will ensure that your hard-earned money will not be lost, also giving you a chance to earn quite a healthy return - no downside and all the upside.

Objectives: increase monthly streams on my Spotify artist page so I can get picked up by Spotify algorithms better. Which in turn means I get on even bigger playlists which in turn means… er… profit?

Did it work?

Yes, but with massive caveats. I got onto lots of playlists and my monthly Spotify plays went from under 10 to over 2,000. I have yet to be picked up by the big Spotify algorithms though.

Which are the best supplements to take to enhance your health and wellbeing? We visualised all evidence for all health supplements in one chart. Now regularly updated with revitalising boosts of fresh data.

Perhaps most startling, children between the ages of 15 and 19 are 82 times more likely to die from gun homicide in the United States than in peer countries.

America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world. Research shows that the more guns in a country, the more gun deaths. Conversely, states with fewer guns have fewer gun deaths.

In cardiovascular terms, the drop in heart rate from 1000 steps/day to 2000 steps/day is significant: a full 3 bpm decrease. And as step count increases, resting heart rate steadily drops—until you reach about 5000 steps per day. After that—6000, 7000, even up to 10,000 steps—the curve flattens.

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